Muslim Voices for Diversity Dialogue
20 March 2023. From 13:30 To 18:30 | Presentation | Spanish | English | French | European Parliament
MAGIC (Muslim Women and Communities Against Gender Islamophobia in Society) is a project co-financed by the EU’s Equality and Citizenship Program (2014 – 2020) that seeks to prevent gender Islamophobia in Spain and Belgium, in particular in the media, and extract lessons applicable to other European countries.
The project has been carried out in the span of two years (2021-2023) and has included, on the one hand, the monitoring and analysis of gender Islamophobia in Belgian and Spanish newspapers and, on the other, collaboration with leaders of Muslim communities, Muslim women and civil society organizations working in diversity to increase awareness of these biases in information and to encourage the inclusion of Muslim voices in the media. All the outputs of the project are available on MAGIC’s website.
In this sense, the project has mobilised so far more than 535 people from Muslim communities, associations and NGO’s and media circles of Spain and Belgium, done trainings, promoted awareness campaigns created by associations in the framework of the project, and become a platform for dialogue and cooperation between these associations and media representatives.
Presentation at the European Parliament
The closing event of the project, titled Muslim Voices for Diversity Dialogue, includes the Secretary of State of Belgium for gender equality and opportunities and diversity, Sarah Schlitz, the MEP Pierrete Herzberger-Fofana, also co-president of the anti-racism and diversity group of the European Parliament (Ardi), and Shada Islam, editor-in-chief of EUObserver Magazine, among representatives of the project’s Consortium, researchers, and representatives of civil society networks working against racism and other types of discrimination.
Recommendations and proposals stemming from the works of MAGIC to expand the diversity of Muslim women voices in the Media are to be explained at the event as well as the presentation of the results of 15 months of monitoring and analysis of the journalistic discourse in a selection of printed newspapers of Belgium and Spain (Le Soir, the Dernière Heure, Het Laatste Nieuws, El País, La Razón, and ABC) and a debate on the involvement of civil society in shaping media narratives.